Monday, June 3, 2013

Words of Wisdom from Jerry Brown?

I once sent Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial
campaign a cranky e-mail, and although I got no response, they apparently
decided that my interest made me a supporter of California’s incredible
prevaricating Governor.So I now receive
occasional e-mail updates from his office.The latest contained the text of his address to this year’s crop of
Political Science graduates at UC Berkeley.The address, or sections of it, is worth a read, and I include it below.This makes the post a bit lengthy, but the
speech provides some context:

First of all.
Congratulations to all you graduates. It is not an easy or trouble free path
that you pursued to arrive at this moment. It takes intellectual work and a lot
of persistence. And, my congratulations also to your family and friends who
helped you. No one does it alone.

I can remember my own graduation 52 years ago. It took place on the field in
Memorial Stadium on just as beautiful a day. Clark Kerr was president of the
University and my father—who was governor—stood next to him. I don’t recall
what anyone said. But, I did feel some unease as my father began his short
talk. At that point in my life, my head was full of clean abstractions and
political talk sounded a bit discordant, a little too obvious. And it was kind
of embarrassing that my father was handing me my degree.

Later, as I walked for the last time through the campus, I looked around at the
buildings and the vast spaces, the view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
I felt a real sense of loss. I knew that a very special time in my life was
over. I didn’t know then how many more adventures—and surprises—were to come.

It is good that you took political science because politics and the political
are desperately in need of fresh minds—minds that actually understand some
science, that appreciate knowledge and clear thinking.

My degree was in Latin and Greek but I did take one political science course:
116B, the second semester of Sheldon Wolin’s political theory class. Another
one of his students, Professor Wendy Brown, is the person who asked me to join
you today—probably because she knows I like political theory. It is more
coherent than political practice.

Professor Wolin wrote a book that was published in 1970. It was called “The
Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond—Essays on Politics and Education in the
Technological Society.” I want to quote from the Introduction. Keep in
mind—these words were written more than 40 years ago.

“The campuses are disturbed because American society itself is in profound
crisis… It is a crisis of both values and power… America’s success in pursuing
certain means has become America’s failure. Having become the richest and most
powerful nation in history, we can begin to see our poverty and weakness… Ours
is also a crisis of power in which the mightiest nation in the world, having
passed some fatal limit, now watches its power grow ever less effectual in
coping with the human environment and ever more destructive in dealing with the
natural environment.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, the politics on and off campus were raucous with Civil
Rights and fierce opposition to the war in Vietnam. Ronald Reagan, who was
governor, bemoaned what he called the “beatniks, radicals and filthy speech
advocates.” And—although we didn’t know it at the time—J. Edgar Hoover, the
Director of the F.B.I., was keeping close watch on the campus.

Now the issues are less stirring but they are more deeply imbedded both in the
economy and our political system. Today, we think of Syria and Afghanistan and
Iraq; or of the breakdown of our vaunted banking system and the millions of
people who lost their homes and their jobs as a result; or of unprecedented and
growing inequality; or perhaps of one trillion dollars in student debt.

All the while, Washington is polarized and bogged down in empty political
combat.

All these problems are serious and count as some kind of crisis. But even more
threatening is the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s monitoring station in Hawaii. On May 9th of this year, the
agency reported that the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming—carbon
dioxide—averaged 400.03 parts per million.

It was at least three million years ago that CO2 levels were ever this high.
Then, the polar ice caps were much smaller and sea levels were 60 feet higher.

If that happened today, the airport runways in Oakland and San Francisco would
be under water. Our view of the ocean from the Greek Theater would be scenic
but very alarming.

Of course, the changes in our climate are not happening in political time. By
Twitter standards, the pace is very slow but inexorable and, most troubling,
soon to be irreversible.

That’s the world you face. But you have the skills and the knowledge and a
sense of the good. You can make change. Soon you will go into business or
government or academia or perhaps a non-profit. Many have told you to get ready
for the pressures of the marketplace, for global competition. I tell you: get
ready to be an active citizen.

You have studied political science because you know that beyond consuming and
competing, there is governing, there is the political domain of free people.

Professor Wolin coined the term “fugitive democracy” to indicate that the power
of a people—democracy—is episodic, not continuously present. But at key
moments, bureaucratic and corporate power gives way to an aroused citizenry.

Look how the hostility to immigrants expressed in the passage of Proposition
187 in 1994, gave way to what is now a majority in California who support
immigration reform.

Today, in Washington, key Republican and Democratic leaders are working to
fashion real changes in our immigration laws. Obviously they saw the power of
Latinos in recent elections but they were also moved by the actions of
energized people all across the country. The Dreamers—they also have had a huge
impact.

Another example: For years, the State of California was spending more than it
collected in taxes until it was forced to finally cut back. For the university,
this meant tuition increases year after year. But then, a million Californians
signed petitions to place Proposition 30 on the ballot. Despite the pundits and
their predictions of defeat, Proposition 30 passed with 55% of the vote.

You helped make that happen, as did so many others in colleges and schools
across the state. And, lo and behold, voter surveys indicate that many more
people in California feel good about the direction of their state.

For an important moment, Democracy came alive. The power of ordinary people,
joining together, made a profound difference.

I am not saying that the big issues are going to be settled easily, that
greenhouse gasses will soon be curbed or that inequality will be quickly
reversed. But I do affirm, based on my experience, that people can exercise
power wherever they are in society. Certainly not on every occasion but, at
crucial moments, imaginative and bold people make a difference.

You have studied political science. You have had the special privilege of being
here on the Berkeley campus.

As you leave today, never forget what the graduates before you did and what you
can do when the moment calls on you.

You have the intellect. Make sure you have the will.

The grizzly bear is on our California flag. It portrays strength and
determination.

Take that with you.

Go Bears!

In many respects, it is a thoughtful
speech, calculated, of course, to demonstrate what I’m sure is the Governor’s
very real intelligence.The idea,
captured in his quote from Wolin, that our problems are of a chronic and
therefore unsolvable nature, is a favourite of Brown’s (and no wonder, for it
provides his quick fixes with good cover).

But you have to hand it to the Governor:
he is at least willing to speak the name of California and the nation’s demons,
listing amongst them the moral decay of our financial system, the rise of what
would once have been an intolerable level of inequality, and our defiant march
to climatic self-destruction.

And his invocation of a democratic
consciousness that rises and falls in response to social change is a timely
one, which was illustrated in the quickly-corrupted economic populism of the
Tea Party, and in the powerful critique developed by an all-too-fleeting Occupy
movement.

And yet, Governor Brown is satisfied to
trumpet the likes of Prop 30 (passed by voters last November as a stop-gap sold
as a solution) as an example of what our state needs.

Neither Prop 30 nor any of the
Governor’s other proposals begin to address the democratic deficit which lies
behind the destruction of California’s once-glittering public sphere, a sector
comprised of good schools, a three-tier higher education system that was the
envy of the world, a system of spectacular state parks, and a social contract
which perhaps more than any other in the United States recognised the need for the
creation of a social democracy to weigh the scales in favour of the needs of
the many, tilting it away from the avarice of the few.

The Governor, it would appear, is happy
to talk about the problems.He is more
clear-eyed than many a more inhibited politician in identifying and discussing
them.But he shrinks from action where a
sure victory is not guaranteed.For all
his talk of Prop 30 winning against the odds, the measure was constructed not
on its policy merits, but according to the favourability with which most
Californians regarded it in polls.

The People, Brown seems to suggest, must
provide the lead, and arrive, in the numbers crunched by pollsters, at a
consensus before the Governor will act.That way, as we well know, lies anarchy in the context of California’s
political swamp, which needs thorough draining before we can address any of the
symptoms of that structural illness.

But instead of tackling our broken
politics, the Governor is content to present himself as an interpreter of the
public mood and an executor of the public will.It is curious, and more than a little unfortunate given the stark moral
choices he outlined above, that in the name of political expediency Governor
Brown’s method of governance relies on the technocratic application of
band-aids rather than a morally-charged assault on our mutant polity.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I work as an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research. This blog also appears on the website of the Redding Record Searchlight.